


On A Warm and Bitter Breeze

by jesseofthenorth



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Community: smallfandomfest, Friendship, Gen, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesseofthenorth/pseuds/jesseofthenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve cannot sleep and he doesn't really get why. It might be a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On A Warm and Bitter Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest on LJ  
> The prompt was PTSD Steve & Danny

Sometimes Steve almost forgets how fucked up he is. Something invariably comes along to remind him.

Since he came back to Hawaii it's been easier in someways, to move past the parts of his life that could have left him with the most damage. But in other ways Hawaii is the worst place he could be.

Here he doesn't have to move past the things he's seen and done and lived through as a military specialist. He lets it come up one piece at a time and mostly he's dealt with the detritus of his previous career. The Navy has people for that and he has used them.

It really _is_ good to be home. That's what Hawaii is and always will be. Home.

Dr. Collings believes that having a home, even one that was out of reach is one of the things that kept Steve so effectively grounded. He thinks but does not say she is pretty predictable for a shrink.

“What I would like to understand better Steven is why in the face of that emotional stability do you still occasionally still suffer from Post Traumatic Stress.”

Steve would just like to call himself lucky and move on. He could probably do that a lot more effectively if he could sleep.

He's mostly doing okay. Sure he didn't sleep as much anymore but it isn't really a problem. He could (and had) got by on very little sleep for long periods of time. He didn't really see the problem. He got a lot done at night.

There is a lot to do at the house and the cool thing about being the boss is that he can just go in to the office as early as he feels like. He gets the reams of paperwork done before the rest of his team even showed up in the morning. There was no one to call him on it.

So the not sleeping (as much) thing isn't really big deal.

And Dr Collings 'thing' about him always being on watch? The doc seemed to think it was some kind of a big deal, to Steve it was just being careful. Yeah he watched what was going on around him, there is nothing wrong with that. The Navy went  to considerable expense to train him in to do it. Yes Steve was aware that he was no longer on active duty. His training still held.

He doesn't get why 'hyper-vigilance' is a bad thing, if it means he can keep the people he has in his life now safe.

Dr Collings' re-hashing of Steve's liking everything ordered got old pretty quick.  
 _That_ he can completely attribute to 20 years in the military. It came with the territory. Besides he has some free time on his hands at night and there is no reason he shouldn't be using it to keep all the areas in his life tidy. When she says that it might also potentially be a symptom of PTSD Steve just laughs. He doesn't say anything when she points he could be using that "free time" to sleep.

But he keeps going back to talk  because he has to admit on some level that what he and the doc are doing twice a month is helping to resolve some shit for him. It's hard to talk about some of it but it's working. Steve's feeling more comfortable in his own skin, less disconnected. In his opinion a good part of that is that he is no longer on the move constantly. He's home and he's staying, for the time being at least.

So it's all good.

He works on his Dad's house, does his job and makes a life for himself here. He remodels himself with the help of his shrink so that he fits better into civilian life. He  likes it. Likes having friends and being home, even if everything is different.

It was all good. Everything's fine. He's just a little tired sometimes. He'll sleep eventually.

  
Only he doesn't. He lays in bed at night so tired he kind of wants to stop breathing sometimes. The effort to do even that is almost beyond him. He feels himself slipping away as if he losing the tight grip he has always had. But when he's drifting toward sleep finally a breeze will lift and the scent of the Plumeria will drift inside and snap him out of sleep like a kick to the gut. And it will be another night of laying there until he thinks he's going to lose his shit completely before finally just getting up and going to find something to fix or clean. He cannot spend another minute laying there not thinking about the scent of the Plumeria.

He doesn’t know what it is about that smell that makes his gut roll and heave. He smells it and suddenly his mind is chasing itself in circles dipping and dodging around things he hasn’t thought of in more than twenty years. Things he never wanted to think about again.

When he goes to see Dr Collings on Thursday she looks at him shocked.  
“Come and sit down before you fall over!”  The blatant concern on her soft face and in her voice makes his stomach hurt.

He cannot stand it. She looks so worried and Steve cannot handle that sort of concern. She guides him over to her leather couch and sits down beside him.

“Steve. This cant go on!” she runs a hand down his back her professional exterior cracking under the weight of her concern. He tries to shrug away from her.

The window is open and a breeze is blowing and suddenly the room is filled with the scent of Plumeria. Steve feels something bubble up inside of him, a great burst of hurt and suddenly he is 16 again and looking into the sad eyes of a uniform cop. “Son is your father home?”

And all the hurt and fear and sadness and outright terror of that long ago moment slams into him hard. He can hear his father again and the hurt sound he made when the cop said “ We're sorry to inform you...” Steve can see the flowers on his mothers favorite tree and smell that scent and he knows she will never fill their house again with the blooms never fill their lives with her care and love. He cannot make a sound over the roaring in his ears can only stand there and let this moment happen around him.

  
When Steve comes back from that moment he finds him self doubled over gasping for breath on Dr Collings couch and he can hear her saying “ That's it Steve. Let it out. You are safe here. Nothing about that event can touch you again”

He doesn't believe her.

She talks to him in quiet soothing tones. At some point she stops talking long enough to tell her receptionist to re-schedule her next appointment. She talks and talks and Steve tries to listen but he has nothing to say in return. He hears her though. When he leaves a couple of hours later he feels hollowed out and exhausted. He is too tired out to be embarrassed by tears he's wiped away.

Danny is waiting for him in the waiting room. Steve stops moving when he sees him sitting there.  
“I called Det. Williams, Steve.” Dr Collings tells him.

He feels a little betrayed but then she says “ You are in no shape to drive and I felt a friend was a better idea than a cab.” And Steve decides it's okay because she's right about Danny. His friend. Steve goes with him without a word.

Danny drives him home without a word, doesn't ask if Steve is okay or if he needs anything. Just drives in silence and follows Steve inside the house. Steve has never been more glad of his friendship. Solid and unwavering.

Steve climbs the stairs and instead of turning to the master bedroom he turns to his child hood room, still stacked with trophies and the detritus of his childhood.

The room has been shut tight for to decades and nothing has penetrated from the the outside. It's dry and a little musty and there are no smells here but stale dust and a little dry rot. Steve folds himself up on the too small bed and closes his eyes.

When he wakes up again it is to morning light and the smell of coffee.

He goes down to the kitchen not sure what he'll see there.

He should have known. Danny is sitting at his table drinking coffee and reading his paper.

“You slept” Danny says clearly happy to see it.

“I did” Steve answers in surprise and gets himself a coffee.

  
He sleeps in his old room every night until the Plumeria is done blooming. He thinks about cutting that tree down and chopping it into very small pieces but he knows in the end he would regret it. His mother loved it. Instead he cuts a branch of the flowers and takes them to her grave.

Dr Collings makes him talk for a solid hour how that made him feel. He finds he doesn’t really mind.

That night he sleeps for 8 hours.

The next Spring when when the Plumeria blooms again he misses one night of sleep before he moves into his old room, now a redecorated spare room, and sleeps where nothing will disturb him. When it gets really bad he brings his mother some fresh flowers.


End file.
